"The cyber space must not be allowed to descend into a lawless realm," Zhou said when delivering a report on the work of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) last year.

He said efforts were made to safeguard Internet order and cleanse the cyber space in 2014.

Zhou said the SPC enhanced crackdown on offenders who infringed upon other citizens' privacy using information and Internet technologies, thus protecting personal information security. The chief justice cited the case of two GlaxoSmithKline-linked investigators -- the first of its kind involving foreigners in China -- as an example.

In August last year, Briton Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Ying Zeng were sentenced to two and a half years and two years in prison, respectively, for illegally obtaining private information of Chinese citizens.

The couple were hired by GSK China as private investigators in 2013.

According to Zhou, Chinese courts have seen a 58-percent rise in the number of criminal cases last year that involved illegally obtaining citizens' private information.

He did not provide an exact number of such cases, only saying that Chinese courts concluded some 1.02 million first trials in criminal cases last year and convicted 1.18 million people, up 7.2 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, the chief justice said efforts have been made to safeguard Internet order and cleanse the cyber space in 2014.

The SPC has made decisive efforts to crack down on Internet rumors, Zhou said, pointing to jail verdicts on two Chinese rumormongers.